From the fall of 2010 through the fall of 2011, travel data was collected from nearly 19,000 households across 28 counties in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, providing key travel statistics for the region to help in the planning of future transportation investments. The purpose of the 2010/2011 Regional Household Travel Survey was to obtain household travel data for the 2012 base year of NYMTC’s travel demand model, the New York Best Practice Model (NYBPM).

The federally-funded survey was sponsored by the region’s metropolitan planning organizations, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) and the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), in conjunction with the planning agencies representing Connecticut, and Orange and Dutchess counties. In addition to English, the survey was made available in Spanish, Chinese and Russian.

In total, 143,925 linked trips were derived from 18,965 households and 43,558 participants, including a sub–sample of 1,930 households whose members provided travel data using wearable global positioning system (GPS) devices. The GPS sample was used to assess the magnitude and pattern of under-reporting of travel in the diary-based portion of the survey, and estimate correction factors that can be applied to more fully account for travel in the full sample.

Key Findings:

The approximately 22 million residents in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut travel survey study area made approximately 80 million individual trips on an average weekday.

Public transit serves 8 percent of all weekday trips in the region.

Household trip rates increase with household income, the presence of children in the household and household size.

Slightly more than 82 percent of all trips were intra-county.

Nearly 67 percent of all trips were made by automobile, followed by non-motorized trips made by walking and bicycle (18 percent).

Manhattan, the other boroughs of New York City, and Hudson County, N.J., had the highest percentages of non-motorized trips within their boundaries (56 percent, 32 percent and 31 percent, respectively).

Those making less than $30,000 annually are more likely to use bus services (10 percent), or walk/bike (24 percent) as the main mode for their trips than those of higher income.

Approximately 67 percent of all intra-county trips and 95 percent of all inter-county trips in the region were made by automobile, while 66 percent of travel to Manhattan was made by rail.

Over 80 percent of commute trips into Manhattan use some form of public transit.

54 percent of all trips were between home and destinations other than work; 23 percent of trips involve the workplace.

Work trips in the region normally took between 32 and 35 minutes, with work trips from Manhattan averaging 30 minutes, and work trips from the other NYC boroughs averaging 42 minutes (the high in the region).